Return, O LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on Your servants.
Moses opens by anchoring the people to God's covenant favor before he addresses their misery and judgment. He means to say: yes, you die like all men, yes, God punishes sin, but He has adopted you, and that peculiar grace is your true dwelling place through all generations.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 90:1-17
Return, O Lord, how long? Come in mercy, to us again. Do not leave us to perish. Suffer not our lives to be both brief and bitter. Thou hast said to us, "Return, ye children of men", and now we humbly cry to thee, "Return, thou preserver of men." Thy presence alone can reconcile us to this transient existence; turn thou unto us.
Numbering our days rightly is an art we must learn from God: we must live under constant weight of death's nearness, compare our work to our time, and mind it with double diligence. True wisdom is serious godliness, and frequent thoughts of our swift removal hence will stir us mightily toward it.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 90:12-17